On Tuesday, I questioned whether SOE could afford to offer double or triple Station Cash sales now that these deals also slash the subscription price. A mere three days later, I have an answer, with a one-day triple station cash sale. Not only is the studio apparently unconcerned about the reduced subscription rate, they're also unconcerned that players who paid $40 less than two weeks ago for an expansion that will now be on sale for under $15 will take that personally.
(If this move surprises you in any way, you haven't been paying attention for the last year. To quote what I wrote in April when they did something similar after the Velious launch: "There's a line between smart price discrimination and making your existing customers feel that you value potential customers over current ones, and repeated incidents like this over the past year have left many current players feeling that the line has been crossed.")
If there's one thing I've learned about being a consumer of non-subscription games, it's that the size of the discount matters not if you buy something on sale that you don't end up using. My level of interest in the Age of Discovery expansion is so low that I'm willing to take the chance that I will eventually pay more for it later. The increased AA cap is the only thing I see as must-have in the package, but I'm still 40+ AA's shy of the Velious cap, so I'm not likely to need this increase for a while. Besides, double and triple SC weekends have come around several times per year, and now that I know they're not gone, there's no reason to think that I can't wait for the next one.
I will definitely put some money into this promotion - the new Electricity powerset, paired with a permanent upgrade to Premium account status and incidentally some additional content was already on my shopping list for DCUO at the $10 price, so it's a slam dunk at $5 with 500 SC left over. I'm tempted to go a bit higher than that - $10 would give me the SC to purchase the Green Lantern DLC as well (while I'm less interested in playing a Lantern, the actual content comes before the Flash stuff in progression). The only way I'd go to $15 would probably be if I found myself near a Walmart and was able to pick up one of their extra bonus SC cards - 2000 SC for $15, which would then be tripled, would leave me set for a long while... but might also be the trap of paying now for points I'm unlikely to use until later. Guess we'll see how my mood is running tomorrow.